1.21 Unfinished Beta
Added 2024-05-31 17:54:57 +0000 UTCHey guys!
Some testers liked playing this episode. But I’m not happy with it. I’m releasing it as an unfinished beta, which means it’s in an unpolished state, and has some missing dialogue branches.
I basically think the Bangkok episodes are getting too long and linear. This isn’t the experience I want in Female Agent going forward – I don’t want to keep making episodes like this.
I want:
Shorter episodes
…with more choices, branches and dice rolls that customise your story
A tighter, faster moving main plot with constant story progression
Better use of montages and time skips (instead of playing out every single club shift)
More chances to characterise and customise your heroine
More cool spy action to balance out her demeaning undercover work
A focus on sex/nude scenes that are more exciting and novel
My plan to achieve this is:
Restore the Lifepath. This will enable you the player to customise your heroine’s stats, skills and sexual history before the mission.
Cut the flab from the existing Bangkok episodes, and add in some branches and decision points to make them more fun.
Very tightly plot out the rest of the Bangkok barmaid arc.
These last two things are what I’m working on right now. It’s complex and challenging work – I’m throwing myself at it for long days, and by the end I’m frazzled – but I’m really excited by it. I feel like the game will make a huge jump forward in quality and player experience in the next few releases.
Play the unfinished beta here.
Comments
I like the episode length, and love the idea of more choices, dice rolls, and options to customize the experience. I enjoy the pacing of the story, to me it feels like an authentic undercover experience.
Andrew
2024-07-28 21:33:24 +0000 UTCWell, I was hoping for a full release this cycle but if the reason for that is that the backfill of the cut content discussed was the reason, then I'm sure the full 1.21 will be more than worth it to have the college paths and agency entry stuff back in. I know most players want much more frequent releases, and so do I, but in this case, if we're just getting the full version soon enough but with enough new content to start another playthrough all the way back, then thats fine with me
Redhand
2024-06-02 23:14:55 +0000 UTCEdited for clarity After giving it some thought, the infamous BJ scene should have been Kate’s transition into a bar girl. You could explain the reason she was so distraught despite her previous liaisons was because she knew, or believed, that this was her audition for bar girling. The narrative also seems to have forgotten about the “impress mistress Lu (or Lin?) or its upstairs, or out” teaser. The scene could have went something like, Kate realizes the blowjob is an audition for bargirling. Connor’s suggestion to Kate to impress Mistress Lu is in fact a manipulation tactic, knowing that if Kate impresses Lu, that she will get sent upstairs. The bargirling needs to start. We should already be in it. If Crush thinks there’s not much for Kate to do creatively, it’s because it’s already been established that if barmaids do too much the bargirls will get jealous and fuck them up. Once Kate is a bar girl, creatively, anything goes. Right now a lot of potentially hot scenes are being wasted on side characters while Kate watches from the sidelines I understand the desire to get Kate to the point where she would mentally and emotionally agree (albeit reluctantly) to being a bar girl. But that point was with Bonaht! That was her emotional and mental high point, and she overcame it. The very next shift, she should have been informed that once she trains up her replacement, she’ll be moving upstairs. Now, creatively, anything goes. You could even make a hybrid role just for her. “You’ll be bargirling when we’re short on staff upstairs, and barmaiding when we’re short on staff down here.” And Kate, in her role as a spy, will be compelled to say yes. Position herself to get more info? From more people? And have more access to more of the club? How could she say no considering the stakes of the mission?
mengler23
2024-06-02 13:59:44 +0000 UTCYeah. Do it like so.
Juan Homa
2024-06-02 12:49:41 +0000 UTCI enjoyed this latest version, but can absolutely see why Crush thinks that it is too long. One of the reasons why it is so long is that it has way too much description. The game should not be taking place in Bangkok, it should be taking place in the mind of the heroine. She's not thinking about the side dishes at the restaurant, she's thinking about how she is going to have to fuck this guy because he bought her a meal. Skip all the makeup choices and just have her put on makeup. Also, simplify, simplify, simplify! Especially if you are going back to redo the lifepath. Pick the handful of skill variables (the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM you can work with) and have the life story revolve around developing those skill or tendencies and NOTHING ELSE. The game does not need a shooting skill, for instance. She can shoot just as she's trained to do. The game does not need a lock-picking skill and a stealth skill and a pick-pocketing skill or whatever. It just needs a skullduggery skill that incorporates them all.
Joe Steel
2024-06-02 00:52:38 +0000 UTCIt honestly sounds like you are in a negative feedback loop of your own self-doubt. It is a perfectly natural reaction to have when it comes to any creative endeavor. It is caused by the disconnect that occur when the real world result of a person creative work doesn't match what that person imagine the result should look like. It stems from the fact than none of us are a Mozart or a Michelangelo, except in our heads. Basically, the creative ideas we have can never be fully realized because reality gets in the way so we start thinking they are bad and that we are bad and we need to try to do something different to make them a reality. Which never work because reality! So self doubt and self-criticism grows in a negative feedback loop that eventually leads to bad decisions and creative burn out. It's classic performance anxiety, and based on your lasts post you have it in spades. (Honestly, do yourself a favour and reread your posts and look at the tone of your posts, comparing the ones you posted this spring with post you posted when you felt things were going well, or just the Christmas special post. It's like night and day.) There are only two ways to fix it. The first one won't apply to solo dev as it require someone in charge of the people doing the work. The second is to get some distance from the work. It's only by distancing yourself from your work you can look at it with fresh eyes, to get a new perspective and to see the result as an outsider would look at it and not some so entrenched in the creative process that they develop tunnel vision. The last thing you want to do is pull long days working even harder. Instead, you need to STOP WORKING ON THIS GAME! Take a vacation! Go hunt moose in Alaska. Or learn to scuba dive in the Bahamas. Or anything that gets you out of your house and head. Just go do something else that not related to this game and your work. Something that stops you even thinking on this game for the duration. And stay away for at least a month. It's the only way to gain perspective on your work and allow you to reflect on what works and what doesn't without letting your self-doubt dictate your opinions. It is clear that you are passionate about this project and that you want to produce the best possible result. But sometimes that require that you let go and stop caring. Self-doubt and performance anxiety can easily lead to getting burned out, which in turn risk opening a whole new can of worms, mentally and physically. So for the sake of your fans that want to see this game succeed, for the sake of the game itself but most important for your own sake, TAKE A BREAK! Please, you need to take care of yourself before worrying about the game. So take my advice and use your next update to announce your long vacation.
Scytha
2024-06-01 22:02:57 +0000 UTCLove the new shifts and the date with Mac! I also really like Bry and Mia, and I would love to see a threesome or other sexy hi-jinks with them Good luck! You're a rock star!
Loyola
2024-06-01 20:48:36 +0000 UTCI think you have a serious issue with contradiction design goals. I will try to keep it simple and short. Mass Effect vs Skyrim The former is very linear and has a great story, but linearity is a burden and doesn’t create a sandbox experience. The latter, its great sandbox, but the stories you experience are separate and unrelated in general. I think you want both and that is very hard to achieve. So far, the game is very much “mass effect”-like, and you want to move toward “skyrim”. That is not impossible, but it will take time and a lot of supporters/fans will be disappointed with another half-year rework (if it takes only that long). On the other hand, the more I think about it, the more I start to agree that it is necessary. You are reaching a point where the club is a hub that starts activities. The few short side stories are just like that. Perhaps it’s the right time to move it into such a status and streamline the bar-work and push the story forward. I will note a few things though (meandering thoughts incoming). One of the strengths of your game is that the story is interesting regardless of the erotic side of it. That requires “story” and a certain level of linearity that is unavoidable. If you suddenly swing too much into the other direction you will run into different kinds of issues. One such issue I see is what I have seen (and dislike) in many sandbox erotic games. There are specific paths that cater to certain fetish, and if it is “your thing” you only care for it (player perspective). I really do not want the game to go in such direction. Whatever “modifiers” you decide to go with (traits, kinks, etc.) they should be distinguishable and manageable (development POV) and impact the game in almost every place. I think another commenter said that the Life-path is creating a lot of bloat (my interpretation of his/her words). I think that is a major concern and very valid, because as we go deeper in the story, those things will have larger and larger impact. Heavy story driven games have the issue of exponential growth of variables and conditions. Maybe you can avoid some of that if you keep the side stories more to the side and not couple them with the main story too strongly. I think Cyberpunk 2077 did very good job in that regard. There is the main story, and a few larger side stories give you additional options, but do not change the main story a lot. Two things at the end of my meandering thoughts (they really are meandering a lot). First is regarding the “hub” I mentioned. I really dislike the “randomness” of how some HTML “sandbox” games handle random encounters. I do not want to play a game where “triggering” an event requires me to sit in front of the browser and click the back button to try the event lottery again, hoping I get an interesting encounter. Make them more deterministic in nature or some rules/logic behind the choice of what you get (I have some ideas about that, but that is different topic). Last thing. I remember what The Chieftain said in a presentation about M4 Sherman tank. “You fight the war with the tank you have now.” So sometimes you cannot wait for the perfect “tank” and perfect “scene”. This is about whether a scene is good or up to a specific level of quality. It is quite subjective. I would suggest pushing the stories to testers at earlier stages of development. Regardless of how you feel about the release, I liked it! I agree it felt a bit rough (mostly due to the missing entries and the larger number of notes for future improvements), but it was not bad, for me it was the same level of quality as the game so far. I know it is still not the version that you disliked and reworked, but asking for help (by pushing to testers earlier) is not a sign of weakness or incompetence, quite the contrary.
tegli4
2024-06-01 15:26:02 +0000 UTCNot sure what was meant but there are a few scenes early on where you wander around Bangkok and explore things. As far as I can tell those little side bits add nothing to the story really. On the flip side they are already written. Maybe just add an option to skip them. A Do you want go do this thing, or just relax foe the afternoon.
Vysirez
2024-06-01 11:03:31 +0000 UTCI would agree
Aaron Lamb
2024-06-01 08:19:25 +0000 UTCI generally support creatives even when I disagree with their decisions. They are the backbone of all entertainment, after all. However, I think I agree with you here. I don't see how it's possible to reincorporate the life path without Crush getting stuck for months on not only smoothing out the transition into the current narrative, but incorporating all the little details and mechanics that the life path will inspire. Crush is a perfectionist to a fault, and the task that's being taken on is monumental unless that perfectionism can be reigned in hard. This, in my opinion, is a perfect example of the three things that kill most promising projects: 1. Perfectionism induced stagnation 2. Feature creep 3. Overly strict adherence to an "original vision" when the evolution of the project, the team, their skill set, or whatever, is unable to realize it. I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I believe going back to the life path will take months to do properly, will add almost nothing to the existing narrative, and will very likely result in more burnout and frustration for the team. Creatives like to create, and this is effectively going to be months of editing and mechanic implementation. Again, happy to be proven wrong, and this is all said with lots of respect and love to the Dev team. I've enjoyed the project and I'll continue supporting it for now.
mengler23
2024-06-01 03:46:02 +0000 UTCTo be brutally honest it's really clear that what I (and most of the players by the looks of it) want/think is good is really off from what the dev wants/thinks is good: this was the best release in quite a while imo. It really really REALLY is a shame that the game is going back to life path, I can only hope it's not too long of a distraction.
Marlow
2024-05-31 23:58:40 +0000 UTCAlternatively, you can railroad to the end on a linear dev track, then branch out after. Bamboo style.
Godzilla511
2024-05-31 23:37:10 +0000 UTCJust played through this unfinished Beta. I do agree with your Statement that the Bangkok Storyline is pretty linear, most choices only influence if another character likes what you said. But it definetly is a good Storyline so far. I enjoy your writing and you obviously put a lot effort in flashing out all the little details in individual scenes wich makes it quite immersive. If you find a way to put more branches into the storyline it would make it even better, but from my point of view, you are already an a great path, even with the linearity. Keep up the good work, I'm excited to see in wich direction you will take this game!
Literat0r
2024-05-31 23:33:06 +0000 UTCReally enjoying this. Make the game what you enjoy and you want. People will still continue to love it
Alice
2024-05-31 23:11:23 +0000 UTCI think this episode was fine. Needs to be cleaned up, but played out well.
Aaron Lamb
2024-05-31 21:16:19 +0000 UTCI enjoyed the measurement scene, looking forward to that pool party in booth babe. Really enjoyed Ilsa's and Mem's avatar's, very hot! The stand out scene is the cops, liked that very much. Overall a decent episode though it felt like not that much was going on. Coming of the back of White Russian the Mac date didn't seem that interesting to me.
Chico3812
2024-05-31 21:08:35 +0000 UTCYou're probably a bit too critical with your work. I really enjoyed this episode. I'm also looking forward to seeing the life path implemented.
Lu-Tze
2024-05-31 20:55:56 +0000 UTCI still dont understand what you mean with cutting flab from the existing Bangkok episodes. There are no branches, all the choices are illusions, some of the "choices" lead to filler text already. What flab are you talking about? I seriously want to know. Since when i play the game, i dont see any content that dont fit in (except for the that one infamous BJ scene). Almost all the scenes bring something to the story. The only thing that could be better is having actual choices that matter, which is the oposite of cutting anything tbh. So im a little worried that you believe the story needs to be "slimmed down" by cutting the flab. Whatever that means.
Worldknower
2024-05-31 18:54:43 +0000 UTCThe fact that you kept your word and released it at the end of the month, even if it's not in the state you wanted to be, goes a long way. You can always polish it up later. In fact, with more eyes on the story in the state it's in, you can get more constructive feedback on what works and what doesn't before you dump too much effort into something that doesn't click with your community.
Hoyomojo
2024-05-31 18:43:38 +0000 UTCFor what it's worth, I just wanted to say that I personally really don't like you going back to the life path. So far your attempts of making the game more "sandboxy" have not really improved replayability and instead just added a ton of extra work for you. Being able to choose from 5 different countries and having there be slight differences in dialogue is neat, but personally it does not make me want to play the game again since the overall story is still the exact same. The same goes for all these life path things. Seeing as you are often struggling with creating content that is up to your standards, I think you should focus on making stuff that everyone is going to see without making things needlessly complicated. You simply do not have the kind of rate of output needed to make a sandbox where each playthrough is actually different in interesting ways.
Martin
2024-05-31 18:23:14 +0000 UTC
